Easter 10 Resurrection and the Practice of Hope

[HKHaugan]

The Resurrection turns the world on its ear. When Jesus was resurrected it threw a monkey wrench into the machinery of the world’s standards, goals and strategies. Now there really is a demonstrable, focused image of God through whom we can decipher the unseen,--- the invisible spiritual dimension that motivates reality. Jesus is the visible ‘Rosetta Stone’ enabling us to interpret and understand Creation and man’s place in it. In other words, spirituality in its breadth and depth as revealed by the Holy Spirit through the Word.

This is how Paul saw everything after He met the Lord. The way he had viewed the world was overturned. He was more than an ethnically religious conservative preserving a human way of life. The way he read the Word found him hungry for the Holy Spirit to show him its deeper reality, the delivering Messiah delivering him personally and splashing this truth in the world for all people everywhere. Jesus gave him an entirely different perspective. The Word took on a whole new look for him. As he said in Romans 1:20, “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities, His eternal power and divine nature…have been clearly seen, being understood, from what has been made…” Jesus brought the Father’s eternal mind, will and Spirit presenting His goals, standards and strategies to counter and replace the devil’s blinding intrusions.

Paul was given precision in his teaching about spiritual reality. There are three lasting qualities that make up God's spiritual life---faith, hope and love (1Cor.13). We hear a lot about faith and love but how much is centered in hope? Hope is an eternal quality since it is a quality of God. We have already looked at seven ways we can move in hope. Now we want to zero in on the way we can let hope work in us. Hope can be grounded.

Prayer is the practice that grounds hope because hope is always by its very definition getting us to look ahead, forward, focused on what God 's will is for us in every next moment.. Hope is the spiritual foundation for prayer. It is part of the spiritual stimulus package with faith and love. Hope and faith work together to support love. Prayer is the way we lift up of our hope to God. Prayer carries the specifics of our hope. Prayer is offered in the atmosphere of hope, which is the Spirit of hope. “In the same way the Spirit helps us in our weakness [weakness is fear, looking at life through the rear view mirror]. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express (Rom.8:26).”

When we pray we are moving ourselves into a different dimension, the dimension of the Spirit where hope is. If you really think about it, when we pray we are moving not in terms of what we have but in terms of what is not yet realized. Of course, we may be thankful in prayer as we recognize what God has done. But thanking Him is a prelude to what we hope He will continue to do and what we hope He will change. When the father of a demon-possessed boy came to Jesus he asked Him, “Lord, I believe, help my unbelief (Mk.9:24).” We hope He will. That which is incomplete we ask to be completed. Hope is the fertilizer for spiritual growth.

Hope gets us to look ahead. We come to Him in hope and lay out the specifics of our lives and the lives of others. We come in hope that He will forgive us, inform us, empower us, feed us, fill us, cure the ills of those we know, soften the hearts of the unbeliever, strengthen us to witness, direct the affairs of a nation and bring us understanding and comfort in a hostile and confusing world.

Scripture is our hope manual. While it gives us a look at spiritual history it is given us so that we can practice its principles which are always forward looking. Obedience to them guarantees we are setting our eyes on what is to come. Every generation repeating them is looking forward when they pray, “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven...(Mt.6:10).”

Can we not see the Trinitarian nature of 'faith, hope and love' as a reflection of the Lord Himself? Perhaps a little immersion into hope is called for. Meditate and ponder its depth as you see all its province in God's Word.

“We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain, where Jesus, who went before us, has entered on our behalf (Heb.6:19-20).”